i could have stopped when the milk started to thinken up rather than waiting for a specific pH level?

Basically, yes. Because that corresponds to a pH of ~4.8, which is a tipping point when meso bacteria don't reproduce all that much any more. Your viability numbers are not going to be drastically higher by waiting longer.

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Taking an extended leave (until 2015) from the forums to build out my farm and dairy. Please e-mail or PM if you need anything.

Well after making my primer culture... i got to try it out this weekend on my first cheese.... i had been getting frustrated with using direct set cultures... with my milk having a ph of about 6.73 i was finding i was often waiting 1 - 3hrs for the ripening!... Well with this after adding the Primer culture i was at my ph target within 10 mins!

Sailor, nice to be back and see this thread again. Once I went to primer cultures, I never looked back. You've my eternal gratitude for this, and so many other contributions.

Unfortunately, I'm starting over again. I'd like a water bath system that can do double duty - maintain the inoculated primer cultures at their needed temps, and a square configuration - i.e., not a stockpot stacked in another one - for cheese makes. The induction cookers I've found are over $200, will keep looking but that's a bit much for me, given that the purpose I'd have for the cooker is exactly as Sailor has laid out above.

Any food warmers I've seen - that would be controlled by a PID, as Yoav showed so well, or by John@PC's elegant solution - cannot handle a 6" deep hotel pan, so a 5 gallon tomme make is out (it took Pav reminding me one can, er, stack stockpots to get the benefits of doing makes with water heating). Anyone have any thoughts? Either an idea where to obtain an induction cooker that would do the job, but is under $100, or a square water bath solution, controlled, that could handle 5 gallons of milk?

Unless you are trying to be really strain specific, I don't see the need to over engineer the MC process. We make MCs at least every other day and have developed a very workable protocol.

Mesos are VERY lightly inoculated at the end of the day before we go home. The sterilized/cooled milk is around 90-95F and we simply wrap a towel around the bottle to slow down heat loss. The warm milk gives a turbo start to the bacteria for a couple of hours and then it incubates at room temp for the rest of the night. Next morning the culture is fresh and ready to use.

Thermos are a little different. We make these first thing in the morning, start with milk around 115-120F and inoculate a little heavier. (More bacteria means faster ripening). We incubate in a dehydrator at 115F but you can just put the bottles in a pot of 120F water and wrap with towels. You can also use an insulated food bag or drink cooler. Our Thermos are done within 4 to 5 hours before the end of our work day. Because of a lag in the pH curve, many Thermos come on strong towards the end so it's important not to allow them to over-ripen. When they have visibly thickened to a medium yogurt texture, stop the process and stick them in the fridge.

Keep in mind that commercial cultures that are a blend of Meso & Thermo are not good candidates for making MCs.

Quick question. Raising the milk for the starter to 200f is to pasteurise it right? If I am using store bought milk, it will already have been pastuerised and packaged in a sterile environment. So, can I get away with sanitizing the outside of the milk bottles?

If you take an unopened bottle of store bought, pasteurized milk and leave it on your kitchen counter at room temperature for a few days, what happens? It spoils. That's because there are lots of bacteria and other microbes that can and do survive pasteurization.

So, the purpose of heating the milk is to sterilize it, not pasteurize. There is a big difference.

Sorry if this has been covered - I think it's been covered with respect to using a blend, something like Alp-D, but not specifically this. I plan to do a reb make, closely following Yoav's recipe and thread. My bent would be to do a MC for the meso (here, in the absence of meso B, using FD), and direct set for the thermo, here, in the absence of MY800, using thermo B.

I can do a MC for both, but effectively, given the primarily meso (if higher meso range) nature of this make, with thermo's as stabilizers, enhancers over a longer haul, I presume - any issue with just doing a meso MC and adding the therm., directly? I expect not?

You should definitely not do a MC for a blend of Meso and Thermo. Not sure why you want to do a MC for the Meso and a direct set for the Thermo. I do MCs of both and then just add them at the same time to my warmed milk when making cheese. Combining a MC and a direct set can be done, but seems confusing for getting the proportions right.

OK, will do that, Sailor. To be clear, I didn't mean blending both and then doing a single MC with both strains, but rather a meso MC, and on the day of the make, adding the meso MC and then direct set thermo. Recipe calls for 1/8 tsp of both for direct set, so I was going to do 1% b.e. on the meso MC, and 1/8 tsp thermo direct set.

Sounds like it will be better to do a MC for both, and if the recipe calls for equal percentages of direct set both, doing an equal b.e. addition for both.

If you combine a MC of a Meso and a direct set of a Thermo, you should consider the difference in the culture dynamics. The Meso MC will be much more active the instant that you add it to your milk. The Thermo DVI on the other hand will have to spend considerable time rehydrating, waking up, and becoming active. So, the proportions after 30-60 minutes will NOT be the same as what you started with. Say you start with a 50/50 theoretical mix. Because the Meso is going to grow so much faster, after an hour you may have an 80/20 Meso to Thermo ratio.

Now, that being said, Mesos are going to grow much faster at warm milk starter temperatures anyway. Thermos grow, but they aren't going to hit their optimum until a cheese is in the cooking phase at 100F or more. So from a practical standpoint, the beginning ratio with a blended MC/DVI may not be critical anyway.